


Failure, Death, Wooded Areas at Night

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: CSI: Las Vegas
Genre: Community: csi_flashfic, Gen, Phobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-27
Updated: 2010-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Kakorrhaphiophobia was the fear of failure, or defeat, and Warrick had diagnosed himself with it.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Failure, Death, Wooded Areas at Night

**Author's Note:**

> This story was first posted February 25, 2006.

_Kakorrhaphiophobia_.

Warrick had learned the word at the age of twelve, short and skinny, wearing coke-bottle lenses to read a beat-up old book at the rec center, its rough pulp-paper pages going brittle and the covers held on with scotch tape. The book had been full of big words and their meanings, and he'd practically memorized the section on phobias, sitting in the corner with the small shelf of books. Kakorrhaphiophobia was the fear of failure, or defeat, and Warrick had diagnosed himself with it and learned to spell it (K-A-K-O, R-R-H, A-P-H-I, O-P-H-O-B-I-A) and muttered it to himself walking to school, from school to the rec center, home from the rec center, in his bed at night. It had been his magic word, his prayer, his whistle in the dark.

It was only later, taking psych classes in college, that he'd learned that phobias are irrational fears, and realized he'd been wrong all along: his fear of never making it this far had always been perfectly reasonable. Still was, even then, working his way through school.

Still was, even today. If it had taken them another few minutes to find him, Nick would have been dead. If Warrick had lifted that lid and pulled Nick out instead of stopping to kill the ants, he and Nick and half the people there would have gone up in a Semtex fireball.

Standing alone in his bedroom, still covered in the dirt that had covered Nick, hospital-smell still strong in his nose, knowing he'd just done as good as four shifts straight, Warrick could still hear the strangled little sounds Nick had made, the way he'd screamed when Warrick had left him. He closed his eyes and reached for the old words, black type on yellowing paper, and with them the quiet and calm of the rec center. Ants, ants, that was _myrmecophobia_, and confined spaces, everyone knew that, _claustrophobia_, and being buried alive, _taphophobia_. Death: _thanatophobia_. There was even a word for the fear of wooded areas at night, and he opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling and trying to remember, like it mattered. Like the next time he and Nick were in an orchard in the middle of the night, it would help anything to say, "Hey, Nick, you may be suffering from _nyctohylophobia_."

But the awful truth was that he knew Nick was safe in the hospital, and still Warrick wasn't through being afraid, because it hadn't only been Nick he'd been afraid for. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the darkness that had followed the sight of Nick holding his gun to his throat on that computer screen, and every time he opened them he was scraping through the dirt to see it again in living color, Nick on the other side of the fogged-up Plexiglas with his weapon pressed to his jaw.

He'd tried to tell Catherine, but he hadn't even been able to form the words, only to gesture to his head with two fingers, only to trail off meaningfully--_if we don't find him_...

But they had found him. There had been no death, and no failure, and there was nothing left to be scared of that Warrick could name, because there was no name for the thing Warrick was scared of. He wasn't afraid of guns: he was afraid that one of these days, he would put one to his head and pull the trigger.

He was still wearing his gun, the one he'd bragged to Nick about packing, and it was heavy on his hip. If he lowered his hand and touched it, he might--

There was no reason he would, of course: that was what made it a phobia. But still he couldn't bring himself to touch his gun, to take it off, and so he was frozen here, standing at the foot of his bed, jeans and shoes and belt and gun still on, hands cramping from clutching his elbows, too tired to think a way out of his dilemma. After another moment he shook his head, pulled the blanket from the bed, and went to crash on the couch. He could deal with the gun in the morning. Everything would be easier in the morning.


End file.
